


Not the Only Ones

by the_pen_is_mightier



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Heaven and Hell, Humor, Love, Multi, Perspective Hopping, minimal angst, right after canon, silliness, some outsider perspective, the other angels and demons get the news, this is a place for all my happy headcanons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2020-12-20 18:11:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21060995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_pen_is_mightier/pseuds/the_pen_is_mightier
Summary: An angel gets a call. It's not one she was expecting.





	1. Chapter 1

_“Imagine all the people living life in peace… _  
_You_  
_You may say I'm a dreamer_  
_But I'm not the only one_  
_I hope some day you'll join us_  
_And the world will be as one”_

_\- John Lennon, “Imagine”_

The call came first to an office worker. She was hunched, itchy-eyed, over a wide, white desk, tapping out numbers onto a clear, shimmering screen - some mind-numbing report about miracle outputs for the second quarter being below average. She’d been working for hours without a break, and her shoulders ached, complaining of how long it had been since she’d released her wings, and all she wanted in the universe was the chance to go home and take a nap. 

The call came and she groaned, turning her attention to the rippling white tablet at the corner of her desk - great, another task, that would put her five minutes farther from finishing this report. She’d been getting more calls than usual, these days. Heaven was busier than it usually was. The bosses didn’t tell the lowly office angels what the celestial armies were up to, but word did tend to spread, and the word lately had been that they were gearing up for something big.

“This is Heaven, Miracle Records Department 63D,” she said, putting on her most polite voice, trying not to convey her exhaustion. “How may I help you?” 

The voice on the other end was low and hoarse. The kind of voice you might expect some insidious reptile to possess. Its owner did not introduce himself. “It’s me.” 

The angel froze. “What -”

“I’ve just heard word from Lord Beelzebub.” The voice, which was already little more than a croak, went hushed and pitched with excitement. “They told us - this is insane, but - they said the War is over!” 

She gaped down at the tablet. _“What?”_

“Big battle’s off. The Antichrist faced down Satan and sent him back to Hell. His friends killed the Four Horsepeople. And you remember that demon I was telling you about? Crowley?” 

“Yeah, I remember -”

“He and your bloke Aziraphale got Beelzebub and Gabriel to stand down.” 

She couldn’t believe it. This must be some kind of joke. “They got _Gabriel_ to -”

“Look, I don’t know all the details, but here’s the point, all right?” The demon’s voice had grown louder, stronger, like he was beginning to process and believe the news all over again. “The point is _the war’s off_. They don’t want us fighting anymore. There’s going to be -” he choked off, as though he couldn’t say it, as though he was overwhelmed.

The angel dropped her tablet. It plummeted and shattered on the glassy floor. The sound was deafening in the humming silence of Heaven’s office space, and a dozen or more angels looked up, throwing her looks that ranged from quizzical to irritated. 

“What was that for?” said the angel seated next to her. 

She pushed her chair back slowly, straightening and planting her feet beneath her. Thirty or more eyes now followed her as she stood.

“It’s over,” she said. “The War is over.” 

The eyes - blue and brown and green, and every one bloodshot with overwork - widened as one.

“Peace,” she said, forcing out the word her best friend hadn’t managed to say, hadn’t managed to articulate. “It’s peacetime again.”

The angel next to her was on his feet faster than she could blink. “What are you talking about? Who told you? How did you -”

“I got a call from Hell.”

The other angel folded his arms. “Could be a trick, then. How are we supposed to trust -”

“I know him. The demon who called.” The words rolled off her tongue with no effort; it had been three thousand years since she’d met him, and she’d never once gained the courage to admit it aloud. Certainly not to a roomful of angels, a full half of whom were now paying rapt attention, who had turned away from their work. She stepped back and stared around, feeling her skin begin to tingle with numbness as it crashed over her, _peacetime, peacetime,_ after six thousand years as it began to sink in.

And then she saw one angel turn back to his desk, and pick up his own tablet, and tap out three digits, one right after the other. She recognized the number. She’d dialed it many a time herself, in furtive moments away from her endless hours entering data into a machine.

Everyone watched him put the tablet to his ear. Everyone watched him gasp out “It’s me,” and then, a moment later, “they say the War’s off.”

Everyone heard the wild whoop that came from the other end, though they were separated from the source of it by a million light years and a feud as old as time itself. 

The room was plunged into chaos. Angels sprang from their desks, some reaching to make calls of their own, others simply disentangling themselves from their desks, even overturning their chairs for good measure - most sprinting toward the door on feet lighter than they’d felt them in centuries. They spilled out into the hallway, pushing and shoving each other, but there was no annoyance left - every workspace grudge forgiven in the blink of an eye, and they laughed at the tangle of limbs as they all struggled to be the first person out. They blocked a group of angels in uniform who had been striding down the hall.

“Is it true?” someone demanded of the little group. “Peace? Is it -”

“It’s true.” The soldier who answered was stiff, curt, but no one missed the suppressed smile in his voice. “Peace.”

Someone darted forward and yanked open the next door on the hall, shouting within at a seemingly endless row of workers bent over filing cabinets, sorting through stacks of yellowing records. “Hey! You lot! The war’s off!” 

Silence, disbelief. Another angel ran for the next door and shouted the same message to the next room, and then voices began to rise, confused questions, dumbstruck hope. It couldn’t be real, surely, not after so long, not so easily? Not off the courage of a couple of rogue agents and a handful of children - surely it was too good to be true.

But the news continued to spread with the electric speed reserved for news so long-anticipated it had settled into some collective neural network. News no one had ever dared voice a wish for, and yet, and yet…

“The War is over!”

_“The War is over!”_

“It’s over!” 

Heaven was coming alive. 

__

In the darkest depths of Hell, among rank and lightless cubicles, a similar cry was rising. A sea of faces that had been sagging with boredom, seeming in the process of rotting off their skulls, had blinked back suddenly to attention when a bat had swooped down from the ceiling and cried _fighting’s done, work’s done!_ They exchanged disbelieving glances first, but their disbelief was gotten over quicker than that of the angels - and in another moment someone had risen and grabbed the dirty typewriter he’d been working on and hurled it to the floor.

“Good riddance!” he called to the bat as it swooped away. 

“They aren’t serious,” said someone else. “It can’t be -”

“You heard the bat.” Another demon, a grin spreading over his face, rose as well. He was holding an enormous stack of carefully sorted files. He stared at them for a moment, then stared around, and then with a wild look he clicked the fingers of one hand and the whole stack burst into flames.

“Good riddance!”

The room was laughing now. It was ugly laughter, but there was no malice in it, not even as other delighted-looking workers began to overturn their desks and smash through their cubicles. No, if any angels had been around they might have been shocked by the feelings running through the space. And they might have been more shocked if they saw what some were beginning to do in the celebratory frenzy - because, decidedly undemonically, downright scandalously, they were starting to hug each other. 

“I don’t believe it.”

“Does this mean -”

“We don’t have to -”

“No more temptation records, no more filing -”

“No more keeping tabs -”

“My angel’s going to be so excited!” 

The demon who said it clapped a hand over her mouth a second after, but half a dozen other demons were already dialing up their own angels, and no one paid her any mind. Demons that had known angels before the Fall, and demons who had gotten to know angels over six thousand years of endless, endless gearing up for battle, friends and best friends and lovers began calling Upstairs with tears in their eyes.

“Have you heard?”

“They’ve let you off work up there, too?”

“Yes! _Yes!_ We’re free!” 

Hell descended quickly into a gleeful destruction spree. Records from sixty centuries of mind-numbing office work came crashing down, up in flames and down to rubble. A group of three demons upended the old fax machine in the corner that was never working properly. Bodies streamed into the slightly better-lit hallways, leaving trails of debris in their wake, and when they were packed together something even stranger than hugging began to take place. Without music, without any conception of rhythm at all, and without the slightest hint of skill, they began to dance.

To dance, incredible as it may sound, with each other. Still reaching out their arms to fellow souls, unrestrained, for the first time in so long. Their eyes still afire with hope. It was real. Peacetime. 

___

Somewhere in the ether, a demon and an angel watched in silence.

“This wasn’t how I thought this would go, at all,” said Gabriel.

Beelzebub swallowed. “Yeah, I… didn’t think they were this miserable. I mean, demons are supposed to be miserable, but -”

“I know what you mean.” 

The two of them exchanged a glance, then stared back down at their dancing, laughing, rioting troops. They watched as the first demons began to appear in Heaven, in twos and threes, asking to see specific angels, and let through the hallways with no questions asked - and, even stranger, angels popping down into Hell, smiling sunny smiles, snickering at the posters on the walls that Beelzebub had worked so hard on.

“Well,” said Gabriel at last, “this is going to be an interesting week at the office.” 

“Tell me about it.” 

___

Somewhere on Earth, without any awareness of the goings-on in Heaven and Hell, without any awareness of anything beyond each other and the pleasure of being close, an angel and a demon lay curled up together on a couch. 

“I think we should open up a bottle of wine, a little later,” said Aziraphale. “Something really special. To celebrate.” 

“Couldn’t agree more.” Crowley grinned. “We deserve it.” 

Aziraphale smiled and kissed Crowley’s cheek, which was positioned delightfully close to his lips, almost an invitation. An offering. An implicit _this is yours_, another entry in the list of a thousand _I love yous_. Aziraphale was still getting used to that. 

“I think we did something good,” said Crowley. “I think - Aziraphale, I really think we might have saved everything.”

Aziraphale didn’t feel compelled to remind Crowley that last time he’d been accused of being good, he’d slammed him up against a wall. All water under the bridge. Instead he snuggled closer into Crowley’s warm arms. 

“I think so, too,” he said. 

“Mmm.”

“Crowley?”

Crowley turned his head to gaze down at Aziraphale. His smile was soft, fond. “Yeah?”

“Thank you. For staying.” 

“Oh, angel.” Crowley held him tighter. “It’s all been worth it.” He kissed the top of Aziraphale’s head, not knowing that somewhere high, high above them, at that moment, over a hundred angels and demons were reuniting with loved ones they thought they’d lost forever. Not knowing that far below, demons and angels were tearing holes in the office ceiling to let in light from the world above. Not knowing anything except that this place, and this time, and this kiss felt somehow exactly right.

“It has, really,” said Aziraphale. “I think so too.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, a few people asked me to write more for this, so here's a second chapter! I think I'll probably add a third as well, maybe more. Stay tuned! And thanks for all the support <3 <3

A certain phone had been ringing nearly off the hook since the end of the world. Since Heaven’s office staff had shrunk astronomically, and since an enormous population of angels and demons, glued to office desks for thousands of years, had suddenly begun manifesting bedrooms and flats and even entire cottages lodged within Heaven’s once immaculate hallways, only one person was responsible for answering it now. 

“Gabriel,” Gabriel grumbled into the white tablet, which was grimy and smudged from overuse. 

“Beelzebub,” the demon buzzed. 

“Yes, I _know_ who it is. Any progress down there?” 

“Got maybe forty demons from the army who still want the war. The rest are holed up with angels all around the place, letting in bloody _sunlight_ from the upper floors and cooking over bonfires.” There was a pause, as though Beelzebub had put down the phone for a moment - then, in a voice more strained than before, “They’ve also started singing.” 

“Singing.” Gabriel put his face in his hands. “Demons are singing.” 

“Your stupid angels taught them how.”

“Am I going to have a horde of dancing angels up here soon?” 

“We’d better get this war back on, _soon,_” said Beelzebub, and their voice dropped, became lower, more insect-like, more deadly. “Or you’re going to find out.” 

“Yes, well.” Gabriel straightened with difficulty in his chair. He’d never had to sit at a desk this long in his life. He’d never worked this many hours without a break. His human form, which was just a kind of concentration-of-essence most of the time, was getting sore and itchy and generally unpleasant. “I might have an idea for that.”

“I’m all ears.” There was an audible wince and Gabriel heard, faintly, the sound of a high note being belted, extremely inexpertly, by some demon down below. 

“We can’t do anything against the Antichrist,” he said, “but we can still make examples out of Aziraphale and Crowley. Dispose of them, with hellfire and holy water.” 

“Won’t that just make people angrier?”

“Not if we play our cards right.” Gabriel sat back in his chair, wanting to kick his feet up on the desk but lacking any space free of paper. He’d never had a messy desk before. “See, demons like destruction, right?” 

“So I’m told.” There was another wince, and this time Gabriel heard the beginning of the chorus of _Dancing Queen._

“Dispose of Crowley in some sort of public trial,” he said, “and they’ll all show up to watch. The angels will be disgusted. They’ll turn against their demon friends and come back to Heaven.” 

“Hmm.” Beelzebub contemplated. “Go on. And Aziraphale?” 

“We’ll deal with him in private. To the other angels, the story with him will be that God smited him.”

“Smited?”

“Smote - smeet - grh.” Gabriel rubbed his eyes. “It’s been too long since I slept.” 

When another rousing round of _Dancing Queen_ blasted tinnily through Gabriel’s tablet, Beelzebub swore under their breath. “Look, I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.” 

“The hellfire and holy water - it’s a plan?”

“Yeah. It’s a plan.” There was a longer pause, but it was heavy, watched. Not a silence of momentary distraction. Finally they said, stiffly, “It’s a good plan. Thanks.” 

A little _click_ and the connection went dead. Gabriel lowered his tablet slowly, gazing around at the paperwork littering his desk like a snowdrift. A million reports on the botched apocalypse, all that had to be written and sorted and filed by only him. While Sandalphon kept the heavenly host out of his workspace and relatively quiet, and Michael watched over the treasury, and Uriel kept watch over Earth, trying desperately to see every corner of it at once. 

They were all as busy as him, and as distant. Gabriel hated to admit it, but there was something nice about having a constant conversation partner in the Prince of Hell. 

_____

Beelzebub closed their eyes and took a deep breath. This had been the worst week of their immortal life. A tiny fraction of Hell was still standing, still usable as a headquarters, while the rest of it had fallen into grotesque use as some sort of angel-demon blanket fort. Last night they hadn’t gone to bed at all, just stayed up urging each other to try different human foods they were miracling up from Satan-knew-where. 

Disgusting as it sounded, Beelzebub didn’t know where they’d be if it weren’t for Gabriel. 

They cleared their throat. With a thought, their voice projected through every realm and corner of Hell. _“Demons, this is your Prince!”_

The call echoed through destroyed corridors and low-lit, leaking office rooms. It blasted through to several huge clusters of creatures clad in dusty black and soot-smeared white, all of which looked up lazily at the sound. 

_“As you all know, Armageddon has been indefinitely postponed -”_

A muted cheer.

_“ - and the demon Crowley is partially responsible.”_

“Crowley!” several groups cheered, and pumped their fists at once. (Far, far above them, in the quiet warmth of a bookshop, Crowley-in-Aziraphale’s-body raised his head from his position sprawled out on an armchair, swearing for a moment he’d heard someone call his name. Swearing he’d felt some inexplicable warmth shoot through him. But the sensation was gone before he could really process it.) 

_“I and the remaining loyal creatures of Hell will be obliterating him later today. With Holy Water. Any demons who wish to attend will be welcomed back, as long as they swear their fealty to their Dark Master beforehand.”_

Those words were followed by silence. For a moment the angels and demons had fallen completely silent.

Back in their office, Beelzebub nodded, feeling pleased. No demon could resist watching the extinction of a traitor. They hadn’t had one in a while - the last big spree had been in the fourteenth century, before which they’d had a great many more demons - but these days numbers were tight. Everyone had always showed up to see, though. Like humans at a hanging. Easy enough. 

In the offices just adjoining Beelzebub, where the loyalists were stationed, there was enough cheering that Beelzebub was not aware of the jeers, hisses, and outraged yells echoing throughout the rest of the underworld.

“How dare they!”

“Crowley’s got _style!_” 

“We won’t stand for this!” 

Aboveground, though, Crowley felt that strange, tingling warmth again, and wondered if kissing Aziraphale was having some sort of aftereffect on him. 

___

It took all day for Gabriel to scrape together enough loyal angels to pull off a kidnapping. He wouldn’t touch the angel himself, of course - that was beneath him, and, to be frank, physical enforcement had never been exactly his style. Once they reached Heaven again, Aziraphale was taken straight to the highest floor, deftly avoiding all the angels and demons who had made the rest of the place a disaster. They knew Aziraphale was here, but the rumor Gabriel had spread was that he’d come to negotiate. It’d be easy enough to spread the story afterward that God had called down fire on him for daring to blaspheme in Her most sacred space. 

Aziraphale was calm and cold, calmer and colder than Gabriel had ever seen him. It was unnerving watching those eyes, still as snake’s eyes, stare into the flame he’d summoned from below. It made Gabriel tense.

What had him so even-tempered? He’d always been a babbling moron, coming here before. All that rubbish about the Antichrist being a ruse…

Well, that had turned out to be true, actually. Huh. 

Gabriel grimaced. It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting Heaven back into line, which would be easy to do once they knew the way God dealt with renegades. All he had to do was tell Aziraphale to step into the flame - and he would, of course, the spineless bastard, and he’d be gone, out of Gabriel’s hair forever. Good riddance. He’d finally get a night of sleep, actual full-on sleep not sitting at a desk, and everything could go back to normal.

Perfect plan, perfectly easy. Aziraphale glared at him before stepping toward the column of fire. Gabriel did his best to smirk. Perfect plan.

_____

“Okay, so,” said Gabriel half an hour later, in what he hoped was a moderately professional and not-on-the-verge-of-a-mental-breakdown voice, “Aziraphale is immune to hellfire.” 

Beelzebub’s groan sounded like a swarm of flies going into battle. “Excellent. Amazing. Our git climbed into a tub of holy water and asked for a rubber duck.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” 

“The turnout was abysmal, and half the loyal demons defected when they saw Crowley wasn’t hurt. I’m here with Hastur and Dagon and maybe twelve others - we’re the last Hell’s got.” 

“Better than what we have in Heaven.” Gabriel put his face in his hands. 

“What do you mean?” 

He didn’t want to say it. If he said it, he’d have to accept it was true, and he wanted to kid himself for a while longer that it was all a misunderstanding. He wanted to believe this wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be real, after so many millennia of faithful service. Of _faith_, in general, which - whatever else you wanted to say about Gabriel - he had in spades. 

“Well?” 

“I. Uh.” Gabriel sighed.

“Come on, Gabe,” Beelzebub said, “just tell me. Satan - God - er, well, Someone knows we’ve been through enough together these past few days.” 

It was stupid, how much that comment meant to him. Stupid to take comfort from his sworn enemy. But his sworn enemy was all he had left now.

“I’m the only one,” he said. 

Gabriel could feel the shock radiating from the other end of the line. _“Seriously?”_

“They’ve all gone. Aziraphale left with his head and shoulders still blazing and showed himself to everyone on the way back down. Even Sandalphon said he had better things to do with his time if God was going to make traitors like him immortal.” The rest of Heaven was currently holding some sort of impromptu celebration, complete with music he’d never heard before and - yes - from the sound of it, definitely dancing.

No one seemed to remember he was even here.

“They’re all happy,” he said. “I mean, they’re _really_ happy, all of them together. They just love the war being over. They love… being with each other, I guess.” 

There was a long, long silence. Gabriel felt, suddenly, like he wanted to cry. He didn’t know when the last time he’d wanted that was. He’d always considered crying a rather stupid human invention - what was it for, except making you feel as weak on the outside as you did on the inside? But he wanted to now.

“Look,” Beelzebub said at last. “Why don’t you come down to Hell. We’ll talk this out. I’m sure we can come up with a plan.” 

And it was even stupider that he brightened at the notion. Maybe a change of scenery would be good for him. He’d never actually seen Hell from the inside.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”

_____

“Have you been feeling anything strange lately?” Crowley asked, as Aziraphale appeared in the bookshop’s back room with tea. “Like, these little flutters in your chest?”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow and passed one of the mugs to Crowley. “Flutters?” 

“Yeah. Like, I’ve been thinking I hear someone calling my name, and then -” He put a hand to his chest, to emphasize - “then I feel something here. Like an electric shock, but nice. Like a flower’s blooming in there or something.” 

Aziraphale sat back in his seat, frowning. “You know, actually, I think I did feel something like that, while I was in Hell. But I didn’t hear anyone call my name.”

“Weird.” Crowley shook his head and sipped his tea. 

“It felt a bit like it felt in Tadfield, you know.” Aziraphale rubbed his chin. “The feeling of love in the air, do you remember?”

“Mmm.” 

“Do you think it’s a sign?” Aziraphale’s eyes turned upward; Crowley recognized the look. “Do you think we’re feeling something loving us?”

“S’possible.” Seemed unlikely. Their respective head offices had just tried to kill them. Crowley had seen a couple of angels on his way down from Heaven, but he’d done nothing but scare them with his flame-covered appearance. Who was going to be loving them Upstairs or Downstairs? And as for God, well, she’d made clear what she thought of Crowley already. 

Which didn’t matter to him. He had all the love he needed. Aziraphale was everything God and Heaven ought to have been.

They spent a while in quiet conversation. Now that they were back in their own corporations, the world felt finally settled again - everything was calm and peaceful, and the two of them were together. Crowley luxuriated in the freedom of it. Barely anyone came into Aziraphale’s shop even when it was open, so he expected their evening to be completely free of interruption - like a thousand evenings he’d be spending with Aziraphale, now that no one could stop him. 

When he heard the knock at the door, both he and Aziraphale jumped. They exchanged nervous glances as it repeated - three solid knocks, a pause, then another three, as if the knocker was impatient to reach them.

“Should we switch again?” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley shook his head. “No time. Just play it cool.”

They rose in unison and crept toward the bookshop’s door. Aziraphale was cautious opening it, and Crowley chewed on his lip, thinking of avenging angels and demons, thinking of another fight with hellfire and holy water, thinking about Aziraphale in danger again and -

But there were only two people there, when finally the knockers were revealed. Just an out-of-breath looking angel, wings out and wide, a demon on her arm.

“What’s up?” she said. “Crowley and Aziraphale?”

“That’s us,” said Crowley, an eyebrow raised.

The demon stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “They named me Worm, but I go by Wayne these days.” He was grinning like an idiot, like he couldn’t believe he was up here, like he was still processing the sight of the celestial beings in front of him. “You two, can we have your autographs?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! And more to follow!! This is really blossoming into a full-blown multi-chapter fic. Hope you all enjoy the continuation and thanks again for all the support! 
> 
> (Also, the title "not the only ones" was inspired by John Lennon's "imagine," so I decided to put a quote from that before the first chapter)

Autumn was proceeding apace, but there were still areas of the world that were hot, really stinking and sweating and swearingly _hot_, even early on a Sunday morning. They were hotter when you were dressed up in your best suit and tie or had on stifling panty hose under your skirt. Hotter still when you were in a room packed like a stadium, bodies pressed up against bodies, people lining the aisles, shoving for room. Hotter still when the room was buzzing with a mix of anticipation and muffled talk. 

There was a certain preacher coming up on stage any minute, and the cameras were ready to broadcast his performance to those on their couches at home, and the congregants were waiting with bated breath for the sturdy _clump_ of his footsteps and the steady boom of his voice when it entered the microphone. 

_Good morning, America_, he’d cry, and the crowd would go into fits of delight. 

The preacher himself was preparing in an adjoining room. Adjusting his tie, examining himself in his mirror with a satisfied smile. Oh, he looked great today. Coming off a speech last Sunday that had made a few headlines - made a few of the liberals angry, always a good sign as far as he was concerned - and so today he thought he’d push his audience a bit further. Remind them they followed a church that didn’t mess around. Talk to them about Hell. 

_Most of you_, he’d shout, _most of you in this congregation are going to Hell. You all know that, don’t you? There are demons down there right now waiting to get their hands on most of you._

Yes, that would get them sweating, all right. He grinned his most winning white-toothed smile at himself. 

_Think about that. Fire. Damnation. An eternity of torment._ He’d crack a joke - _you better pray it happens to the person next to you!_

Outside the crowd was getting impatient. Shifting around, trying to fan themselves, craning their necks for a better look at the stage. Working to keep their children from crawling into strangers’ laps, or, if they were older, from pulling out their phones in boredom. One teenager was trying to get his mother to let him film the coming sermon. Though he wouldn’t say so out loud, he planned to send the funniest bits to his friends later. But his mother was adamant that he needed to be paying attention. 

Her focus was only diverted from him when, all at once, a hush swept from the front of the room to the back. The sound of footsteps, approaching the podium.

The mother looked up. All the congregants angled their eyes toward the pressed suit, the bright red tie, the well-known face as it came into view. Cameras zoomed in on it; it appeared on gigantic screens above the stage. 

But something was wrong. As the preacher settled into place behind the microphone, there was something different in the way he smiled - it was a small, polite smile, almost an awkward one. And when he began to speak, it was in a strange, affected accent, nothing like his usual confident drawl. 

“Ah,” he said. “Hello, everyone. I’m afraid your preacher won’t be delivering his sermon today.” 

The silence that followed this statement wasn’t the hushed, anticipatory one that had come before it. It was a more ringing silence, one of blank confusion. A few people exchanging glances. What was he talking about? 

“He’s going to make the decision, later today,” the preacher (?) clarified, “to retire and live with his family. Also, he’s going to donate his life savings to an organization that aids struggling refugees.” 

There was some muttering at that. 

“I doubt he’ll ever be seen in public again, so I think I’ll put out the word now, while you’re all still sitting here - he was going to give a sermon today on the war between Heaven and Hell.” The preacher (?) looked down, with a small expression of distaste, at a stack of notes in his hands. “He was going to - ah - implore you to ‘keep your life clean,’ and stay away from anyone who might ‘drag you down to the Evil One.’ I believe there were several bigoted things in that section that I don’t feel comfortable relaying on live television.” At that the preacher looked up and waved, somewhat shyly, to one of the cameramen. 

The cameraman found himself waving back. He’d never been paid any attention by this preacher before, and yet the little smile on his face now was one kinder than he’d received for quite some time. 

“I’ve come to tell you all,” he said, his voice somewhat stronger than before, “that Heaven and Hell have patched things up. There isn’t a war anymore.” 

This news had been declared several times and in several different places over the past few weeks, both high, high above this stage in an office building among the clouds, and down in a dingy basement with none of the glamour this preacher had imagined of Hell. Those other times, they had been met with roars, with cheers, with laughter. They had been met with joy, the joy of a sudden release from tedious drudgery, or the joy of freedom to call out the stupidity of something you hate, or the joy of reunion with someone you never thought you’d see again. 

Here in this church, there was only one sound that met the announcement. It occurred far in the back, and it occurred from the mouth of a teenage boy, who, when his mother turned away from him, had begun his filming of the scene despite her protestations. 

“Oh,” he whispered, and by some miracle of acoustics (or perhaps a real and proper miracle, come to think of it) the word carried to every single listening ear. “Oh, this is going to be _excellent._” 

_____

“That was _excellent,_” wheezed Crowley, an hour later, as he and Aziraphale collapsed back into their armchairs in the back of the bookshop. “That was - Aziraphale, you’re a natural, honestly. I don’t think I’ve seen a group of idiots that angry since I possessed that politician who -”

“Oh, but they weren’t all angry, you know,” Aziraphale admonished. There was no venom to the contradiction; he was smiling, big and wide and sunny, out of breath from giggles. “Some of them were positively inspired. And you saw that boy who filmed everything? I believe he’ll be sharing it all over the interweb.”

At the use of the word _interweb_ Crowley broke into peals of laughter again. Far gone as he was, Aziraphale couldn’t help appreciating the picture before him, couldn’t help feeling warm at the sight of it: Crowley with his head thrown back and his face red from laughing, so utterly and freely happy that it made something in his gut ache. Aziraphale could still count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Crowley like this in all the six thousand years he’d known him. He was determined to wring as many more as possible out of him as they continued along this path together.

“How’d it go?” asked Wayne, coming in from the kitchen with a stack of sandwiches. 

“You mean you didn’t watch?” Crowley looked offended, but not offended enough to resist sitting up and snatching a sandwich from the top. 

“No, we decided to do our _own_, actually.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “Here in London, you mean?” 

“That’s right. Turn on the news later and I bet there’ll be a story about it. I did a pole dance - wasn’t easy, that suit was _stifling_, but I’m an excellent dancer as Crowley knows -”

“You did _what?_” Aziraphale looked horrified. 

The angel who had arrived with Wayne, whose name, as it turned out, was Rahiel, appeared herself from the kitchen. She ambushed Wayne from behind, wrapping one arm around his waist and reaching the other over his shoulder to grab the second sandwich. “You should hear what he said last month about women, Aziraphale.” 

Wayne and Rahiel were staying in the bookshop until they could find accommodation somewhere else. They were one of over a dozen couples that had decided to move to Earth, following the events after Armageddon - events that had been explained, painstakingly and at great length, to Aziraphale and Crowley after Wayne and Rahiel had appeared at their door. Most couples had at least done a stint here before finding lodgings of their own, and they all came around for dinner more often than not - some still seeming unable to believe they were eating dinner with _the_ Aziraphale and Crowley. They were beginning to spread throughout Soho as the weeks passed. 

“We’re watching that later,” Crowley promised. “And you’re watching Aziraphale possessing the American guy.”

“And next Sunday?” asked Rahiel, unwrapping herself from Wayne’s waist and flopping down on the sofa. “Think we can do it again? I want to try a pole dance myself.” 

“I rather thought,” said Aziraphale, “if this all goes well, next time we might try uplifting some of the better preachers. There are ones out there spreading messages of tolerance, you know. I’ll bet there are a few who’d be receptive to the idea that there isn’t any holy battle to be fought anymore.” 

“Doesn’t sound nearly as fun,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale huffed, gracious enough not to mention in front of their guests that it had been Crowley’s own idea, in the dark of their bedroom one night when they’d jokingly discussed possessing preachers, to give a bit of help to the ones who were trying. Instead he rose and took two sandwiches from Wayne’s plate, settling back down in his armchair and tucking into the first as Wayne sat beside Rahiel on the sofa.

“Hungry?” asked Crowley, grinning that affectionate grin at him. 

Aziraphale sniffed. “Possession is hard work.” 

Crowley was practically snakelike as he slithered out of his chair and crossed the room, planting himself unceremoniously in Aziraphale’s lap and curling up there with his head on his chest. “Mmmm. Need to keep you fed.” 

Aziraphale savored his next bite. It was delicious; he really must get the recipe at some point, but he’d never really gotten the knack for cooking, and Wayne was always here to make more of them. Wayne loved cooking, and seemed positively delighted whenever Aziraphale asked him to make something; Aziraphale privately figured there hadn’t been many times, in the past six thousand years, when he’d been allowed, much less encouraged, to do something kind for anyone. 

“Good?” Crowley mumbled as Aziraphale hummed. 

“Oh, yes, excellent.” 

Crowley’s head dipped and he blew a loud raspberry into Aziraphale’s round stomach. Aziraphale found himself laughing again, that warm feeling back in his stomach - the feeling, as Crowley rubbed his waistcoat gently, of being more loved than he’d ever let himself be before. And then Crowley was laughing too, and Aziraphale transferred both sandwiches to one hand and used the other to tilt Crowley’s chin up and kiss him. 

“You two are disgusting,” Rahiel commented from the sofa with her mouth full. 

“You can’t embarrass us,” said Crowley, looping his arms around Aziraphale and nuzzling his forehead into his broad chest again. “Your boyfriend did a pole dance dressed up as a preacher today.” 

Rahiel gazed at her demon fondly. “Yeah, all right. Fair enough.” 

_____

“We’ve still got your support, haven’t we, Hastur?” 

“One hundred percent.” Hastur didn’t hesitate. 

Beelzebub turned. “And you, Dagon?” 

“One hundred and twenty percent.” 

Hastur blinked. “If we’re allowed to do percentages over a hundred, I’m a hundred and thirty percent.” 

“I’m a hundred and thirty-five, then,” said Dagon. 

“Then I’m a hundred and -”

“Silence.” Beelzebub glared daggers at them both. Oh, this was all ridiculous. They wanted more than anything to just dole out some demonic punishment - dunk someone in holy water, like they’d tried to do to Crowley, or maybe fling someone into the Pit (a boiler room on the lowest floor of Hell that reeked no matter how many times it was cleaned, and that was filled with shrieking, groaning machinery that couldn’t be silenced no matter how many times it was fixed) - but they didn’t have the spare demons for that. They had Hastur, they had Dagon, they had eleven other demons still willing to do whatever it took to get the war back on. 

And they had Gabriel. 

“So listen,” Gabriel said, with that irritatingly flat accent, his smile somehow, indescribably clashing with his surroundings. “Listen. Hastur and Dagon.” 

The demons glared at him. 

“We all know this isn’t ideal; if anyone had told me I was going to be in Hell four weeks after Armageddon, I’d have assumed I was here on some sort of victory tour.” (_Brilliant thing to say_, thought Beelzebub, wanting to throw Gabriel into the Pit and lock the door.) “But we’re all we’ve got, at the moment, so until we sort everything out, we’ll have to work together.” 

Hastur and Dagon’s arms were folded. It was a testament, Beelzebub thought, to the strength of their loyalty that they didn’t just run at him and tear his stupid white wings off him. 

“What do you say?” said Gabriel, somewhat nervously. 

When there was silence for a moment, Beelzebub shot them the nastiest look they could summon up. They both nodded. 

Gabriel looked relieved. His idiotic smile widened slightly. “Great. Good. Well, I’ve given it some thought. I think there’s two options here. The first we already tried.” Gabriel gestured to Beelzebub. “When we tried to execute the two traitors. It didn’t work out the way we wanted it to, but the idea was - give the angels and demons a reason, remind them _why_ they were fighting.” 

Hastur and Dagon nodded again. 

“Well, that didn’t work. But there must - I mean, there must be some way of _forcing_ them back to Heaven and Hell.” 

Beelzebub raised their eyebrows. Hastur and Dagon glanced at each other, then at Beelzebub, and Beelzebub looked at Gabriel - they had no idea what he was talking about, either. Gabriel was fidgeting with his jacket. He looked uncomfortable again. His eyes were moving a little too quickly from side to side, like he wanted to be sure he couldn’t accidentally meet anyone’s gaze. 

“What way, exactly?” asked Hastur at last. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Satan, since Adam’s little stunt at the airbase?” 

They shook their heads. Beelzebub grimaced. The Lord of Darkness had retreated to some corner of Hell where no other demon could find him. Sulking, probably, about his rebellious son. Beelzebub doubted he’d be of any use to them, getting the demons back in line; the defection of the Antichrist had robbed him of a considerable amount of his powers, and even if he managed to get Hell in working order again, they wouldn’t have anything to fight unless Heaven got back in order as well. 

“Well, then.” Gabriel’s eyes fastened on the floor. The smile was suddenly gone. “There’s an even higher authority we could appeal to, if it came to that.” 

Beelzebub’s eyes widened. “What?” 

“I don’t - I’ve never - I mean.” Gabriel’s face went red. “It wouldn’t be easy to reach Her.” 

“What do you mean?” Beelzebub blinked. “Haven’t you angels got that summoning circle thing that puts you in touch with Her?” 

“That’s gone silent since the end of the world.” Gabriel’s face was darkening by the second. “And anyway… it never actually put us through to Her. We’d talk to the Metatron, and we figured he was relaying the messages.” Gabriel rubbed the back of his neck. “We haven’t heard anything from the Metatron, either.” 

“So God hasn’t been seen or heard from since the apocalypse.” Beelzebub was taken aback. God was - well, it felt stupid for a demon to think it, but God was supposed to be a little more above-the-belt than that. God wasn’t supposed to sulk like Satan did. 

“No, I don’t think you understand.” Gabriel sucked in a deep breath.

“What don’t I understand?”

He looked up at them, and his eyes looked a little scared, a little more vulnerable than they usually did. “God hasn’t - Beelzebub, She hasn’t been heard from in six thousand years.” 

By this point Gabriel had their full attention. Theirs, and Hastur’s, and Dagon’s. He didn’t look like he knew quite what to do with it. 

“I don’t know who the last person to speak with Her was,” Gabriel said. “But She - well, She isn’t here. In Heaven, I mean.” Gabriel shook his head as he glanced at his surroundings. “Or Hell. I don’t know where She is.” He ran a hand, slowly, wearily through his hair. “I think our only chance of setting all this right again is finding Her.” 

There was a long, long silence after that. This silence, though similar in quality to one that had occurred a few days ago in a crowded church, was not punctuated by any pleased response. This silence lay flat in its shock and its discomfort. 

It wasn’t a plan Beelzebub liked. It wasn’t one they would have come up with - they’d spent the six thousand years of their damnation studiously avoiding thoughts of God, or talking to Her, or being around Her. Of course they believed in general terms that Her plan was bound to be followed - it was Written, and you weren’t supposed to argue with things that were Written - but they’d managed to turn God into a sort of abstract entity, that way. They’d abandoned any and all thoughts of Her as a person. 

Still, bad plan was better than no plan at all. Every day another piece of Hell was wallpapered over with bright pink and blue and green. Every day more demonic weaponry was found and destroyed, melted down to make jewelry or blunted to make play weapons or even just gleefully smashed. Some of it by _angels_, who, as it turned out, could enjoy smashing things just as much as demons did. 

“Will you do it?” Beelzebub demanded of their demons. “Still have your loyalty?” 

Dagon sighed. “Fine. Find God.” 

“Find God,” said Hastur, his jaw set. 

“And get Her to sort this mess out,” said Beelzebub. 

Gabriel extended his hand as if he expected someone to shake it. No one did; in the next moment he withdrew it, awkwardly, still avoiding the death glares of everyone in the room. Beelzebub couldn’t help it; they felt a little sorry for him. 

_____

“Say,” said Aziraphale thoughtfully, as eight of them - him and Crowley, Wayne and Rahiel, and two other couples - settled down to dinner that night. “It occurs to me to wonder, who’s taking care of human souls these days?” 

Wayne frowned. “You mean the damned ones, or the blessed ones?”

“Either group, I suppose.” Aziraphale ladled thick stew into his bowl before passing the pot around. Another one of Wayne’s concoctions; it smelled positively divine, though that probably wasn’t the right word to use for a demon. “I was never in charge of that sort of thing; it was always performing blessings and influencing humans toward the light while they were here on Earth.”

“I was just doing office work,” said Wayne, shrugging. “You know, keeping track of evil levels in different areas and stuff.” 

Aziraphale looked around. “Does anyone else here know? Was anyone in charge of…” he fidgeted a little in his seat. He wasn’t usually uncomfortable around demons, these days, but this topic had never come up before. “...of dealing with human souls in Hell?”

There was silence. The demons all looked around at each other; none of them spoke.

“Well,” said Aziraphale, feeling somewhat relieved, “you must know someone who was, at least.”

More silence. As if the demons were racking their brains.

“Does anyone know what the - the dead human department was even called?” said Wayne, sounding a bit disoriented, as though he was waking up. He shook his head as if to ground himself. “I - it’s never occurred to me to think about it.” 

“Me neither,” said another demon. 

“I have a friend who might now,” said a demon sitting at the end of the table, and pushed her chair back, pulling out her phone to dial a number. “Give me a minute.” 

“You know,” said Rahiel slowly, “Aziraphale, I don’t think…”

Aziraphale turned to her. There was a hard knot beginning to form somewhere in his stomach. He couldn’t tell exactly what he was feeling, couldn’t examine it, when it was so vague and nebulous in his mind, but he knew it was solidifying into something very, very strange. “You don’t think what?”

“I’ve never heard of any angels in charge of human souls in Heaven, either.” 

“There aren’t any departments for welcoming or housing them, as far as I’m aware,” said another angel. 

Aziraphale and Crowley looked at each other. Aziraphale could tell from the expression on Crowley’s face that the same knot had formed in his stomach as was continuing to tighten in Aziraphale’s. 

“Does anyone at all,” said Aziraphale, his voice somewhat higher, “actually _know_ what happens to humans after they die?” 

The demon who had stepped away returned to the table, phone in hand. “I called my friend. She doesn’t know anything either.” 

“We can sense when a human soul’s been tarnished,” said Crowley. “I mean, we can sense _evil_, all right, just as well as you angels sense love. And we know how bad a soul’s gotten when they die.” Crowley’s brows were knitted together. “I guess we all just assumed… that the tarnished souls were coming to us, and the good ones were going up.” 

“I always assumed it was just someone else’s department,” said the demon who had made the call. 

“That’s what I thought,” said Rahiel. 

Aziraphale sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. The hard knot in his stomach wasn’t going away. He didn’t know whether he wanted to sigh or to laugh. Really, what kind of terrible organization did Heaven and Hell have? 

“Sometimes,” he said, “I really wish I could talk to God.” 

The silence that followed this was not tinged at all with shock. There was no outrage at the words, and no disbelief. This silence was pervaded thick, among angels and demons both, with understanding. 

Crowley was the one who broke it. He nudged Aziraphale, poking gently at his belly. “Have some soup, angel.” 

And Aziraphale smiled at him, and Crowley smiled back - not the wild, happy smile from when they’d come back from America, but a smaller, more tender smile. A loving smile that felt like the squeeze of a hand, the curl of an arm around his shoulders, the press of soft lips to his forehead. A smile that reminded Aziraphale of love. 

There’d be a time, he decided, for asking those questions. For now he turned back to his soup and dug in.

**Author's Note:**

> Like my content? Find me on tumblr @whatawriterwields!


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